Anyone using any social media should most definitely actually READ the privacy policy and learn what information is gathered, and how. Do some research. Search engines like Google and Bing gather information from your computer. There are more private alternatives like DuckDuckGo. There are services that will mask your IP address for you (which is tracked pretty much wherever you go (setting ‘do not track’ in your browser isn’t a universally used standard). There are services that provide email masking.

Review all of your settings on all of your social media accounts and make sure you know what you’re showing outward.

And don’t forget your smartphone apps, either in any review.

Twitter’s: https://twitter.com/privacy

If concerned, set up a specific email address, twitter account, etc, that uses a pseudonym. I use outragedca and outragedcanadian.

Having said all that, if you want to play online, it’s not easy to also be very private. It could probably be done if someone was really motivated.

I set up my pseudonyms to protect my identity – to help protect me from trolls, abusers and possible identity theft. I have not taken the steps to go completely anonymous and underground because I truly don’t think anyone cares that much to try and track me down. I consider myself a runty minnow in the great big online sea.

Governments have had the ability to intercept phone communication for a long, long time. I don’t see this as being any different. I don’t think they listen in on my conversations and I don’t they read my emails or give two hoots about what I tweet.

I regularly tweet US Treasury, IRS, Flaherty (now Oliver), Finance Canada, etc. I use my real name and photo. I’m sure they know exactly who I am and where I live.

Last week, I added a new title to my collection. I learned from Finance Canada I am a “repeat requester” when I submitted my second request for information under Access to Information. Since then, I submitted an addendum to the second one (now has a new number) and submitted new ones on Thursday to Finance and to Foreign Affairs. I’m sure they now consider me a “serial requester.”

I don’t want to sound paranoid, or scare people, but it’s almost impossible to stay completely anonymous in any kind of online world. However, it would take the desire to track someone down, and I think most of us are just little fish where they wouldn’t bother… Anyone that has followed the CBC stories about the NSA and CSIS should be aware of their abilities. It’s the way of the world, now, unfortunately. Privacy, if it isn’t dead now, soon will be, I think. I just don’t think they enough care about 99% of us to bother with us.

Lynne I saw on TSN “The Reporters” (regarding the comments from Boston about Subban) where one of these reporter talked about the ability for Twitter to know the identity of people who post tweets. I assume they can check on people who are follower of your tweets.